The manufacture of tires is signficantly complicated by the imparting of decorations onto one of the tire's sidewalls. Such decorations may take the form of strips, either singular or plural, logos, lettering, and the like. Presently, this is accomplished by fabrications using the extrusion and calendaring of a number of black and white components which are subsequently combined into a decorative sidewall preassembly. All the tire components, along with the tire sidewall preassembly, are then applied in sequence to the tire building drum to form the green or uncured tire. Following the tire curing operation, the decorative sidewall side of the tire is carefully ground and buffed to expose the decorative sidewall area which was previously protected by a cover strip. These complex steps detrimentally affect the efficiency of the tire manufacturing process. Further, many interfaces produced in construction of the decorative sidewall tire affect the structural integrity of the tire and its durability and performance on the road.
It is known in the tire industry that different tire carcasses must be formed for blackwall tires than those having decorative features on the sidewalls thereof. Heretofore, each has been constructed differently. Modern tires are designed with increasingly thinner sidewalls, such that the decorative portion of the sidewall is becoming an increasingly significant part of the tire sidewall structure itself. Since the decorative portion is typically less than optimum as a structural element, it is becoming increasingly difficult to manufacture modern tires having sidewalls with decorative features thereon. Previously known tires with decorative sidewalls have been characterized by a plurality of boundaries defining the different layers of the decorative structure, each boundary presenting an area for the development of a potential defect.
To obviate the shortcomings of the prior art, it has been proposed to replace the previously known sidewall decorative features with appliques of polymeric paint which are applied to stock blackwall tires prior to the curing operation on the tire. Such structures and techniques are taught in co-pending patent applications Ser. Nos. 766,227, 766,228, 766,385, and 766,388, all filed on Aug. 16, 1985 and assigned to The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, the assignee of the instant application. The appliques of the copending patent applications are quite thin, on the order of 0.003 inch and, accordingly, susceptible to damage by scraping, scuffing, and the like. While the appliques are designed to be scuff resistant, and the tire receiving such appliques are configured to protect the same from scuffing, the inherent thin nature of the appliques gives rise to concern over damage resulting from use. Such applications have respectively issued into U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,767,481; 4,684,420; 4,699,193; and 4,684,431.